From Years and Years to Bird Box: why we turn to dystopian dramas in a crisis | Fiona Sturges

The vogue for bleak TV seems to reflect our anxiety over troubled times – yet we keep watching

In Years and Years, the six-part BBC drama series from the writer Russell T Davies that starts this week, Daniel (Russell Tovey) cradles his newborn nephew and says: “I don’t think I could have a kid in a world like this … Because if it’s this bad now, what’s it going to be like [for him] in 30 years’ time, 10 years, five years?”

It would be tempting to write Daniel off as a catastrophist except that, as the series shifts forward in time, he and his family are forced to navigate an increasingly divided country in which technology is wreaking havoc, the economy is collapsing and war in Europe is bringing record numbers of refugees to British shores. If you think we’ve got problems now, Davies seems to warn us, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2LSdEXp